


Balcony

by Blurble



Series: Wedding (GON) [2]
Category: Aveyond
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 08:39:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5327750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blurble/pseuds/Blurble





	Balcony

Two in the morning and the last guests were petering out, as the white-vested waiters wheeled away the last trays of food.  
  
There was something so melancholy about a wedding hall after a wedding. The lights seemed so dim, the space echoing in its emptiness, the clicks of the occasional path of footsteps a dull, quiet contrast to the revelry of a mere hour previous.   
  
The floor was littered with food but that would be cleared by morning, when the 'wedding hall' would be the wedding hall no longer bur rather just the usual castle ballroom.  
  
He'd never be able to think of the same way, he thought, even as he felt himself already sinking back into normal life. He'd always remember how up there in the front of the room was where she had turned and said 'Yes', not in private but in front of an entire room of witnesses, so she couldn't deny it now, the way her...   
  
Her smile had lit up the hall before fading, quickly, to something demure and respectable and...  
  
"D'you think he polishes his head, or does it come natural?" She'd whispered in his ear and it had been cruel of her to say it so straight-faced, because he'd had difficulty speaking the entire rest of the ceremony, for fear of bursting into laughter.  
  
And that would have been...  _disgraceful_. Of course.   
  
He thought he was quite possibly tearing up, from happiness or sadness or just plain exhaustion he didn't know. But no, it was just... dust in his eyes, and he blinked it away and coughed. But there was something... bitter, in the back of his throat, and he found himself desperate for air, fresh air.  
  
No one stopped him from wandering out of the hall. Why should they? He was King now, he was...  
  
And where was Mel? He thought, half-desperate for her as the thick grey walls of the castle pressed in on him, stale and old and inescapable.  
  
There was a draft coming from somewhere and he followed it, up the stairs to a door wide open and a balcony.  
  
And...  
  
She was sitting there on the balcony rail, face turned up to watch the sky, balanced lightly with both hands holding the rail and her feet kicking out. On the floor, discarded, lay the crown and veil and.... other things, he thought, only vaguely familiar with the concept of slips or crinolines or whatever those were.   
  
"Oh, hey," she said. "Come to join me?"  
  
"You could fall," he said.  
  
She laughed. "No, I couldn't. But if I did there's a tree right below, so you can stop looking all worried and depressed at me, y'know?" She paused. "You feeling any last-minute regrets? That you got yourself tied down to me?"  
  
"No, that I got you tied down to me," he said. "That you... That I trapped you with me in the life I hate most, with the people you hate most..."  
  
"Yeah, you're right about that," she said. "It does kinda suck but- Oh, for pete's sake, don't start looking like that, I'm not  _done_  am I? At least let me finish what I'm saying before you start kicking yourself in the head, okay?"  
  
"Um," he said. She had reached up her hand and almost instinctively he had bent his head towards her, so that now she was ruffling his hair as she talked, her fingers combing through the strands almost like a nervous twitch and yet so relaxing, how it sent shivers down his spine.  
  
"I  _chose_  this, didn't I?" she said. "I knew exactly what I was getting into and let's be honest here, I was in a state of shock that I even accepted because this is... This kind of stuff is really scary for me. And really, really _weird_ , I mean I almost still keep expecting myself to wake up and these past two years will turn out to have been a very, very strange dream. Only not really. Because it's a bit long for a dream and, um... I probably couldn't have dreamed up the people in it anyway, not, um..."  
  
She had gone scarlet.  
  
"Anywaaaaaay back to the subject. Which is that you shouldn't be worried. Because I'm fine with this, really. And I don't hate you or anything and actually it's quite the opposite and um I think I'm going to shut up now."  
  
Inside him somewhere a string had snapped. He sagged against her, pressed his face against the side of her neck and just...  _breathed_.  
  
"Um, Edward?" She said, even as her fingers curled tentatively against his back.  
  
"I hate this place so much," he whispered.   
  
"I know," she said, softly.  
  
"I thought they might respect me, after I went on a serious quest. But... but vampires don't exist, you know?" He said, bitterly.   
  
('It should be easy to bring proof if what you say is true,' they had said, leaning back in their seats and smirking. 'You were traveling with a vampress, couldn't you simply show her to us?'  
  
But of course Te'ijal wasn't a vampress anymore.  
  
'So not only do you expect us to believe that vampires exist like in the old lore, but also that they can be turned  _back_?' They had said, and he'd lost before he'd started.  
  
Gyendal was clearly a madman, they had said, and would be locked up for his own safety as well as the public good. And that was all he could get, such an insufficient nothing, such a...)  
  
"You don't have to worry what those fat idiots think of you," she said.  
  
"No, I do..." He protested, and found that he couldn't explain to her, what it meant to be a puppet king, to have no power of any consequence-  
  
Standing there on the little white-draped platform before the priest, he'd been so aware of the myriad eyes, fixed on him, hungrily seeking weaknesses- Of which they'd found plenty, he knew. He was nowhere near perfect, but even if he had been he wondered if they would have been satisfied.   
  
"They want to use me," he said at last, "They think they can get away with it. If I'm not careful, they will be."  
  
"And..?" She said, because she could tell he was going somewhere with this and if she didn;t push him he wouldn't get there.  
  
"There's so much!" He said, pulling away from her so he could pace across the small floor, waving his hands. "There's so much that needs fixing, there's so much corruption amongst the nobles-"  
  
"Hear, hear," said Mel.  
  
" _And_  there's a housing inflation going on right now combined with an import/export disparity and a civil services public funding resources option under dispute and the entire transportation system is  _crippled_  by inefficiency, public education needs to be revamped and there's-"  
  
"Woah, slow down," she said, "I didn't process more than a word or two of that."  
  
He waved his hand dismissively. "That's not the point, it's just... I'm not going to be able to do any of it at this rate."  
  
"Alright, alright," she said. "You're over-thinking this, or should I say you're thinking too big picture and stressing yourself out. It's not nearly as bad as you think and if we just take this a step at a time..."  
  
"We?" He said.  
  
"Yes, 'we', you idiot," she said, scowling at him. "I might not understand everything you're planning but you can always explain it to me and it can't possibly be bad to have a spy and a former th- person of my talents at your disposal. So you're not alone, okay?"  
  
"I-" He said.  
  
"But first things first," she said, cutting him off. "I don't have shoes. And the stones are cold and I don't feel like walking across them barefoot. So  _what_ -" She said, smiling up at him- "are we going to do about this very pressing problem?"  
  
He laughed and obediently scooped her up. "I thought you were more independent than this, Mel."  
  
"There's 'independent', and then there's 'getting things the easiest way available, preferably free', Edward. We have long since established which one I prefer."  
  
"You only  _think_  this is free," he said, heading towards the door. "And what happened to your shoes, anyway?"  
  
"I didn't bother wearing them," she said, unequivocally. "Haven't had 'em on all night. No one even noticed, and my skirt was so wide I didn't have to worry about anyone stepping on my feet."  
  
And as he was starting to laugh, at the realization that all night long she had pulled one over everyone's heads, she tugged his shirt and pointed at something over his shoulder.  
  
"Look! A shooting star!"   
  
"Too far away for us to chase this time, though," he said.  
  
"Someone else can have it," she said, and he took advantage of the proximity of her face to kiss her, slowly and lingeringly.  
  
"My carrying services are offered only at a price," he murmured, just to drive the point home.  
  
"Mmmmm," she said, and he carried her down the hall.


End file.
